CTSC:ARRA supplement

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Harvard Catalyst Medical Imaging Informatics ARRA Administrative Supplement

Medical Imaging Informatics Bench to Bedside (mi2b2) This Medical Imaging Informatics project was funded by an Administrative Supplement to Harvard Catalyst through the federal stimulus package aka ARRA. The project will enable clinical imaging data to be used, with appropriate human subject and institutional protections, for secondary research purposes.

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Mission Statement

To facilitate access to and use of the extensive collection of valuable medical images obtained during clinical care in a manner that does not negatively impact clinical care, enhances oversight of access and is in compliance with all local and national regulatory requirements. The target audiences for this project are clinical translational scientists (Radiologists and other physicians), basic scientists, and medical image analysis algorithm developers.

Key Personnel and Resources

Our hospitals are international leaders in the development and deployment of new and advanced biomedical imaging technologies (MRI, high speed CT, ultrasound, PET and others) for clinical practice. Furthermore, the current practice of excellent medical care includes extensive use of diagnostic and prognostic medical imaging using standardized image acquisition methods. The Picture Archive and Communication Systems (PACS) within each of the Departments of Radiology in our participating hospitals (Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Children’s Hospital Boston) contain a wealth of medical images that equal or exceed the quality of clinical research imaging data, and greatly exceed its volume in terms of the number of patients and disease types.

This project uses software that is free and open source from currently funded government projects. This software includes the i2b2 (Informatics for Integrating Biology & the Bedside), a National Center for Biomedical Computing suite of open source software tools that extract and integrate data from of the electronic medical records, laboratory data, billing information systems and genomic data. It also includes XNAT (http://xnat.org/) software that is supported by NIH through the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) sponsored Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN) initiative and NA-MIC.

Human Subject's Protection Training

All project personnel who access the medical imaging data for this effort must secure appropriate IRB approval. If you haven't already done it, take the CITI human subject's protection training course (https://www.citiprogram.org/) and then have your site i2b2 PI add you to their i2b2 IRB development protocol.

Mockup

The mi2b2 installation at HMS hospitals will require careful attention to patient privacy and operational integrity of critical hospital information systems (e.g. clinical PACS). Therefore the software related to this project will be developed and tested extensively before any deployment in a clinical setting.

In order to develop the software in isolation, a virtualized mockup is being set up that includes a PACS system with phantom and anonymized DICOM data, an instance of i2b2 software, and a test installation of XNAT.

Upcoming Events

• Advisory Board Meeting February 15, 2011 Minot Room at Countway 5th floor, 12:00 - 1:00 PM
• ACRIN Medical Imaging Informatics Session, September 29, 2010

Weekly Meetings

Tuesday (10:30- 11:30 AM), call: 1-866-890-3820

• March 15, 2011 Ware room, Countway 5th floor
• March 22, 2011 Ware room, Countway 5th floor
• March 29, 2011 Ware room, Countway 5th floor

Past Events

2011 meetings

• January 4, 2011
• January 11, 2011
• January 18, 2011
• January 25, 2011
• February 1, 2011
• February 8, 2011
• February 15, 2011
• February 22, 2011
• March 1, 2011
• March 8, 2011

2010 meetings

• January 2010 through May 2010 t-con meeting minutes
• June 2010 through December 2010 t-con and face to face meeting minutes

2009 meetings

• 2009 t-con meeting minutes

Using DCM4CHEE

Installation instructions for DCM4CHEE

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